There were several children.[558] The Reformer was born about 1490, some five years after the usurper Richard had been killed at Bosworth.  Bosworth being no great distance from Thurcaston, Latimer the father is likely to have been present in the battle, on one side or the other—­the right side in those times it was no easy matter to choose—­but he became a good servant of the new government—­and the little Hugh, when a boy of seven years old, helped to buckle[559] on his armour for him, “when he went to Blackheath field."[560] Being a soldier himself, the old gentleman was careful to give his sons, whatever else he gave them, a sound soldier’s training.  “He was diligent,” says Latimer, “to teach me to shoot with the bow:  he taught me how to draw, how to lay my body in the bow—­not to draw with strength of arm, as other nations do, but with the strength of the body.  I had my bows bought me according to my age and strength; as I increased in these, my bows were made bigger and bigger."[561] Under this education, and in the wholesome atmosphere of the farmhouse, the boy prospered well; and by and bye, showing signs of promise, he was sent to school.  When he was fourteen, the promises so far having been fulfilled, his father transferred him to Cambridge.[562]

He was soon known at the university as a sober, hard-working student.  At nineteen, he was elected fellow of Clare Hall; at twenty, he took his degree, and became a student in divinity, when he accepted quietly, like a sensible man, the doctrines which he had been brought up to believe.  At the time when Henry VIII. was writing against Luther, Latimer was fleshing his maiden sword in an attack upon Melancthon;[563] and he remained, he said, till he was thirty, “in darkness and the shadow of death.”  About this time he became acquainted with Bilney, whom he calls “the instrument whereby God called him to knowledge.”  In Bilney, doubtless, he found a sound instructor; but a careful reader of his sermons will see traces of a teaching for which he was indebted to no human master.  His deepest knowledge was that which stole upon him unconsciously through the experience of life and the world.  His words are like the clear impression of a seal; the account and the result of observations, taken first hand, on the condition of the English men and women of his time, in all ranks and classes, from the palace to the prison.  He shows large acquaintance with books; with the Bible, most of all; with patristic divinity and school divinity; and history, sacred and profane:  but if this had been all, he would not have been the Latimer of the Reformation, and the Church of England would not, perhaps, have been here to-day.  Like the physician, to whom a year of practical experience in a hospital teaches more than a life of closest study, Latimer learnt the mental disorders of his age in the age itself; and the secret of that art no other man, however good, however wise, could have taught him.  He was not an echo, but a voice; and he drew his thoughts fresh from the fountain—­from the facts of the era in which God had placed him.